Hawaii and Illinois already exploring bids to host Obama library

WASHINGTON » Where will President Barack Obama put his presidential library?

Four years from the end of the Obama presidency, Chicago and Honolulu are ramping up major campaigns to build the center that will house the records of America's 44th president.

In Illinois and Hawaii, the states Obama calls home, universities and community groups are drafting plans and using a mix of public and private efforts to persuade Obama to choose their site for what will be a monument to his historic presidency and an instrument to continue his legacy.

It's an early down payment aimed at influencing a decision that likely won't be announced anytime soon.

"It is a tough choice, but it's not one that I've made yet," Obama said last month.

In December, top officials from the University of Chicago, where Obama once taught law, traveled to Dallas and met with archivists at The George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University. At the meeting was Susan Sher, first lady Michelle Obama's former chief of staff and longtime friend who's now a senior adviser to the University of Chicago's president.

University officials would not comment, other than to say it's premature to discuss a library.

In Honolulu, where the president was born, University of Hawaii officials have visited nearly all the 13 official presidential libraries to talk to officials involved in setting them up. An American studies professor, Robert Perkinson, is leading a statewide effort coordinated by the university, with support from Gov. Neil Abercrombie and other state and federal officials.

The Legislature has passed two resolutions urging Obama to pick Hawaii. One resolution calls it "a matter of great state pride that President Obama is the first Hawaii-born citizen to hold that high office."

On a rocky peninsula in the last undeveloped part of urban Honolulu sits a $75 million plot of oceanfront property that the state, through the Hawaii Community Development Authority, has set aside in hopes of securing the library, Perkinson said. The site sits next to the UH medical school.

The state also has identified alternatives in case that site is unworkable and is expecting the overall cost, if Hawaii is selected, to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

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